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Brothers John (1540 – 1594) and Richard (1545 – 1613) Collins, 16th-Century Sailcloth Makers, City of London Liverymen

Crest of the Worshipful Company of Salters, London
Crest of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, London
Crest of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, London


During the reign of HRH Elizabeth I, the Crown granted a sailcloth patent monopoly to brothers John and Richard Collins in 1574. Thereafter, they held the exclusive franchise to supply the Royal Navy with the sailcloth for 21 years. It’s likely, if not probable that most of the English vessels that battled the Spanish Armada in 1588 sailed the winds with their sailcloth. Undoubtedly, the sails of Lord High Admiral Charles Howard‘s flagship, Ark Royal, were cut and sewn from their textile product that proved to be the engine of his victory at the Battle of Spanish Armada (1588) under one the harshest seafaring conditions imaginable.

The brothers learned the sailcloth weaving trade in Bramford, their birthplace. They took up residency in the City of London in their late teens to join a Livery Company. John apprenticed to The Salters’ Company, and Richard chose to apprentice to The Goldsmiths’ Company. Both eventually attained Freeman status, which conferred on each City of London citizenship.

Richard apprenticed himself to fellow goldsmith Andrew Palmer, MP to learn the scrivener trade. He continued to earn income as a scrivener after his Stationers’ appointment. At that time, the position required a candidate to possess scrivener training and practical experience.

Eight years after translating his Freedom from The Goldsmiths’ Company to The Stationers’ Company, he accepted the position of The Clerke in 1575. Richard held the position until 1613, the year of his death. The succession of his descendants as Stationers was unbroken until 1680 as records up until that time reflect.

Functioning as both the Crown-appointed publisher and chief executive of the company, he not only managed the clerical staff and other inner workings of the publishing operation but also served as the Crown-appointed censor of all contemporary English literary content, whether officially submitted for publication registration or not. During the heart of the Elizabethan Era (when in 1592, William Shakespeare’s plays began stage performance), his censorship responsibility must have been quite onerous for him to manage, especially since he was charged with the responsibility to seek out and destroy anything written that the Crown would have deemed heretical, or seditious.

In 1616 solicitor Francis Collins of Warwickshire (died 1617), the brothers’ cousin, drafted and wrote William Shakespeare’s will. He represented his legal affairs for several decades before the Bard‘s death that same year.

Born in Oxfordshire in 1633, Quaker Francis Collins, John’s 2nd great-grandson, came to America in 1667. He eventually settled on a tract of land located in West Jersey that William Penn had granted to him before his arrival. A bricklayer by trade, he established himself as a community leader and served as a supreme court judge of West Jersey for several years.

Born in Bramford in 1603, Deacon Edward Collins, John’s grandson, immigrated to America with his family and brother John in 1635. He settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a deacon of the Congregational Church in 1638. In 1641 he was appointed the township’s Clerk of Writs.

WikiTree: John Collins

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Press Censorship In Elizabethan England
Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship
The Stationers’ Company: A History, 1403-1959
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
The Stationers’ Company Archive
The Early History Of The Goldsmiths’ Company, 1327 1509
Memorials of the Goldsmiths’ Company: Being Gleanings from Their Records Between the Years 1335 and 1815, with an Introduction and Notes Volume 2
The Scriveners’ Company: A History
A History Of The Worshipful Company Of Scriveners Of London
The Salters’ Company, 1394-1994
The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557

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Author at Harrod’s Deli – London

Steven Wood Collins (1952 – ) Antiquarian, Genealogist, Novelist 

By Steven Wood Collins

I spent most of my life unaware of my ancestral heritage. Sure, I knew of the personal history of my more immediate relatives; but beyond that, I never had any inkling as to my ancestral heritage. Then one day many years ago my sister said to me, “I sometimes wonder about our family background.” And so my quest to discover our genealogical roots commenced.

I started building my family tree with the very basic relationships, going back in time from my grandparents, one ancestor at a time. That initial effort proved to be the hardest part of the pursuit, mainly due to my lack of expertise as a novice genealogical researcher. As I gained familiarity with the databases and how to efficiently mine them, my progress gained ever-increasing momentum. Today, The Patricians! tree (Ancestry.com) contains nearly 120,000 individuals, stretching over 135 generations, 5,800 of which are my direct ancestors in a genealogical sense.

During this trek back in time, I encountered fascinating figures in both history and obscurity. This blog contains many stories about their genealogical relationship to me (and many of you). By far and away, as a student of history, the historically obscure individuals are of particular interest to me. I cite Baron “Blue Beard” Montmorency-Laval de Rais (1405 – 1440) as an example of a historically maligned personage whose real contribution to history, as both a playwright and hero of France, has yet to be properly recognized. Another example is Earl Edward de Vere (1550 – 1604), who’s yet to gain widespread recognition as the actual author of the body of literary work wrongly ascribed to William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616).

My life-long interest in international economics and finance continues unabated. I primarily demonstrate this professional involvement as a contributor to the Long Room, the members-only international finance professionals' forum hosted by the Financial Times of London.

I'm an avid recreational scuba diver who enjoys traveling to exotic dive sites. My love of the sea and marine life gives me an unbounded appreciation and support of “green” issues, especially those devoted to the conservation of endangered species and coral reefs.

He continually posts results of his personal genealogical research to his Goodreads Authors Blog. Entitled The Patricians - The Ancestral Heritage of Steven Wood Collins, the work represents thousand of hours of his research efforts and related commentary.

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